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copyi uR NATIONAL SIN: 

A SERMON, 

PREACHED ON THE DAY OF THE NATIONAL FAST, 

SEPTEMBER 26, 1861, 



SOUTH REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH, 



IsTEAV YOKIi CITY. 



Rev. ROSWELL D. IHTCHCOCK, D. D., 

PROFESSOR OF CH0RCn HISTORY IN THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 



^eb i)orh : 

BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, 

Printing-House Square, rpposite City Hall. 

1861. 



OUR NATIONAL SIN: 



A SERMON, 



rPiEACIIED OiX THE DAY OF THE NATIONAL FAST, 



SEPTEMBER 26, 1861, 



SOUTH IIEFOEMED DUTCH CHURCH, 



NEW YORK C 1 T' Y . 



Eev. ROSWELL D. IlITCHCOCK, D. D., 

rROFESSOR OF CHUKCH HISTORY IN THE ONION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 



"^ t fo U r Ii : 

BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS, 

Printing-Hoiise Square, oppobite City HalU 

1861, 






IN EXCHANGE 

12 O'M 



South Reformed Dutch Church, 
Corner 5th Avenue and 21st Street, 
September 29///, 18G1. 



Rev. and Dear Sir : 



The undersigned. Members of the South Reformed Dutch Church, respectfully 
request the privilege of being permitted to print, in pamphlet form, your 
admirable discourse on "Our National Sin," delivered on the 26th inst., the day 
appointed by the Chief Magistrate of the United States for fasting and prayer. 

We have the honor to remain, in Christian and patriotic affection, 

Yours, very cordially, 

JNO. SLOSSON, 

C. MURDOCK, 

D. A. WILLIAMSON, 
THOMAS C. DOREMUS, 
G. M. CLEARMAN, 
SAMUEL C. BROWN, 
JOHN EWEN, 

To the R. OGDEN DOREMUS. 

Rev. RoswELL D. Hitchcock, D. D. 



Neav York, October \st, 18C1. 

Gentlemex : 

My Fast-Day Discourse, though written hastilj', and written only to be 
preached, is now submitted most cheerfully to your disposal, in the hope that it 
may render some slight service in a cause of such immediate and vital importance 

to us all. 

Yours, very trulj', 

ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK. 

Judge John Slosson and others, 

Members of the South Dutch Church. 



SEEMOK 



"The sin which doth so easily beset us." — Hebrews 12: i. 



The particular sin liere referred to is Apostasy, of 
wliicli the Heln-ew converts to Christianity were espe- 
cially in danger, and against which the writer of this 
epistle especially warns them. But to-day I shall de- 
tach the few words chosen for our text from the con- 
nection in which they stand, and apply them, without 
further preface, to the solemn occasion which has now 
called us together. 

Sin, in its essence, is self-assertion : the finite setting 
up for itself against the Infinite, the creature against 
the Creator. Its forms are various : such as sensuality, 
or the lust of pleasure; avarice, or the lust of gain; 
and ambition, or the lust of power. But its essence is 
always one and the same. Underneath these and all 
other possilde forms, there lurks a single malignant 
principle, which may he best described as self as- 
sertion. 



6 

Of sin, in this its essential character of finite rebel- 
lion against tlie Infinite, we may say it belongs to man 
as man. It is no mere fortuity, which may or may not 
occur. "To err is himta?)^ By nature, there is none 
loyal to his Maker; no, not one. Contempt for the 
Divine authority may, therefore, be pronounced to be 
the easily besetting sin of our race, as such. In one 
form or another, we are I'eljels, all of us. 

But for each individual, besides this generic de- 
pravity, which is in him like poisoned blood, there is 
also some specific infirmity peculiarly his own; some 
one form of spiritual disloyalty, towards which he 
gravitates with a special momentum ; some one sin out 
of all the catalogue of human offences, which he com- 
mits with the most fatal facility and frequency. It 
may not he known to the world. It may not be 
known even to himself, by reason of moral blindness. 
It may be known only to God. But, in either case, it 
is his easily besetting sin; stamping its burning seal 
upon his inmost character, even though it may set no 
mark of shame upon his l^row. 

As thus of individuals, so likewise of nations. 
Nations are not mere masses and aggregates of popula- 
tion ; they are organisms. Each is endoAved with a 
sort of moral j^ersonality, and has a determinate char- 
acter of its own. Individuals may be born and die, 
generations may come and go ; but the national pulse 
beats on without arrest, and the millions of the present 
find their destiny arl)itrated b)- the millions of the 



past. Tlie whole, in tliis ease, is sometliiiig more, and 
other, than simply the sum total of all its pai-ts. It is 
an indivisible, organic whole, planting itself astride the 
generations and the centuries, and standing face to face 
with a wakeful Providence, whose retributions are 
none the less righteous, and often all the more impress- 
ive and salutary, because they do not come at once. 
So France is suffering to-day for having exiled her 
industrious Huguenots nearly two hundred years ago. 

Thus may each nation be disfigured and crippled 
l)y its easily besetting sin; its history disclosing to 
every sagacious observer some one type or aspect of 
the manifold dejijravity of our common nature, which 
dominates over all the rest, setting its seal upon the 
national character, and suggesting the sort of retribu- 
tion the most fitting, and therefore the most likely, to 
be launched, in God's own time, uj^on its guilty head ; — 
as Greece sinned in her idolatry of art, and sank, emas- 
culated and nerveless, first beneath the Macedonian 
phalanx, and finally beneath the iron legions of Rome ; 
— as Rome herself sinned in her inordinate lust of do- 
minion, multiplying her slaves as she squandered the 
lives of her citizens in incessant war, till the Teutonic 
Barbarians came down and crushed her like an ava- 
lanche. 

The circumstances of our assembling to-day require 
no extended recital, being as well known to all, as 
they are, or can be, to any of us. So grave an occasion 
has never before befallen us in the whole course of our 



national existence. We are in tlie midst of wliat all 
history declares to Le the bitterest of public calamities. 
A LH^'-antic armed rebellion is on foot, bent upon ac- 
complishing a permanent dismemberment of the Ke- 
public. Should we consent to this dismemberment, it 
Avould settle nothing. Two clusters of States, such as 
the proposed dismemberment would give us, cannot 
possibly divide our territory amicably between them. 
The very structure of the continent forbids it. All the 
antecedents of our history forbid it. All the passions 
of our nature forbid it. The ink upon a treaty of 
peace so utterly preposterous Avould hardly be dry, 
before the hot embers of this civil strife, now so fla- 
grant, would be flaming afresh. The only way out of 
this frightful war is straight on through it, Avith 
gleaming steel and bellowing cannon, till the reljellion 
against the Government is crushed, and so crushed as 
never to be repeated. Such is the well-nigh unani- 
mous conviction of the twenty millions of peoj^le still 
loyal to the Union ; a conviction shared also by multi- 
tudes, by other millions, perhaps, in the disloyal States, 
whose voices are now stifled by a reign of terror almost 
unparalleled in history. Such is our present distress. 
We are inexorably shut up to the hori'ors of civil war 
as the only possible condition of a righteous and last- 
ing peace. It does no good now to inquire whose im- 
mediate fault this is ; whether it has come about, as 
some would have us believe, througli the culj^able 
intermeddling of our Northern Abolitionists, or is the 



9 

work of disa])poiiite(l Soutlierii Politicians, as the Vicc- 
Presideut of the seceding Confederacy himself declared 
not many months ago. It does no good now to in- 
quire whether the present catastrophe might, or might 
not, have been averted. Here it is upon us, in all its 
stupendous proportions; and there is no deliverance 
for us but by the sword. 

It is a huge calamity, from whose stunning, stag- 
gering stroke, it will take us long to recover. Thou- 
sands of brave hearts must cease to beat, while the 
voices of other thousands, widowed and orphaned, send 
up their piteous wail ; miles upon miles of fertile terri- 
tory must be ravaged ; and millions upon millions of 
precious treasure sacrificed, l^efore this war is ended. 
In the midst of such trouljles, thoughtful men recog- 
nize, instinctively, the presence of a Higher Power, pre- 
siding over the fortunes, and about to determine the 
issues, of this gigantic struggle. It is well that the 
voice of our President, echoing the voice of ])oth 
Houses of Congress, is to-day calling the whole nation 
to its knees in humble ftisting and prayer. The hand 
of God is very heavy upon us. His hottest judgments 
are abroad in the land. We have no inspired Prophet 
amongst us, infalliljly to interpret these judgments. 
Whether leveled against our sins in the past ; or sent 
as a paternal chastening, to insure us a nobler future ; 
or charged with the double office of punishment and 
discipline : who will presume to say ? Nations, Ave 
know, arc sometimes simply punished, even to their 



10 



extinction, for tlieir crimes. Sometimes they ap})ear to 
be hardly more than gently chastened for their obvious 
and immediate good. But oftener, l)y tar, they suffer 
a deserved punishment, which it lies Avitli themselves 
to acce])t, if they will, as a timely and wholesome dis- 
ci])line. Ho\v it may be with us, we shall know full 
soon. In our case, as in every other, it will be found 
that 

God is his own interpreter, 
And he will make it phiin. 

But whatever may be the Divine ])urpose concern- 
ing us, our own duty in this sharp and ])ainful crisis 
of our national life is clear. The trumpet of God's 
Providence, now breaking on us out of the lurid war- 
cloud, is a startling challenge to thouglitfulness and 
prayei'. The whole nation finds itself suddenly con- 
fronting the awful Arbiter of nations. There is no 
escaping the grand arraignment. The nation must now 
review its career, as under the eye of an eternal and 
inflexible justice. While no man, not inspired, may 
dare to say against Avhat particular offence any ])ar- 
ticular judgment is hurled, there is no ofience which 
any man may venture to shield or 2)alliate. Any one 
of our offences, for which conscience reproaches us, nuiy 
justly enough evoke against us the Divine displeasure. 
Now, then, is the time for us to bend our heads, in 
penitential shame, over each and every offence which 
has marked our national career. Nor is this all. The 
nation must now reckon Avith itself in resj)ect to its in- 



11 

most life, and come to a rioilit iinderstandinoj of its 
moral state. If tlie ideas wliicli liave inspired the na- 
tional life, and the j^urposes wliicli have guided the na- 
tional career, and the enterprises which have moulded 
the national character, are beneath the noldeness of our 
origin and the dignity of our errand in history, now is 
the time for us to discover it. If, by reason of glaring 
faults or serious defects of character, we are misimprov- 
ing our unexampled opportunities ; if, by bringing lib- 
eral institutions to needless reproach, we are embarrass- 
ing the friends of such institutions in other lands, and 
so are impeding the general progress of the race : now 
is the time for a thorough self-knowledge, for rej)ent- 
ance and amendment. Brayed as we are in this ter- 
rilde mortar of Providence, it is of the last moment 
that we so confess and renounce our folly as to have it 
depart from us. 

For myself, holding as I do the office of a public 
teacher, a constraint of conscience is upon me which I 
dare not resist, requiring me to attempt what will l)e 
confessed to be a much-needed analysis of our national 
infirmities and defects, as the}" now stand revealed to 
us under the light of these flaming judgments of God. 
Assuming that this nation, like every other, has its 
easily besetting sin, some one type of evil peculiarly its 
own, my task now is, if possil )le, to determine what it 
is. The delicacy of the task, imagined or real, shall 
cause me no disquietude. Honest plainness of speech, 
inspired l^y the fear of God, and by a love for our 



12 

common country wliicli only deejiens under disaster, 
can, sui'ely, oifend no honest hearer, if lie l)e either a 
Christian or a patriot. The inherent difficulty of the 
task is quite another matter. It is not easy for a man 
to understand, exactly, his own nation or his o^vn age. 
A philosophic foreigner like De Tocqueville will some- 
times see more in a month than any native had ever 
seen. And yet it seems to me that the rawness of our 
national character has given it a boldness of outline, 
wdiich precludes the possihility of any very serious 
misjudgment. 

Were I re(|uired to express, in a single word, what 
strikes me as the grand characteristic of our American 
civilization, that one word would he Materialism^ — em- 
ploying the word in its etymological and largest sense. 
Not materialism as a speculation in philosophy, but 
materialism as the passion and the presiding genius 
of our life. 

A slight historic survey, which need not detain us 
long, will suffice to set this matter in its proper light, 
and show us precisely where we stand. The Middle 
Ages, hirsute and turbulent as in some res])ects they 
may have been, were yet singularly thoughtful and 
spiritual ages. In politics, they laid the foundations of 
modern Europe. In art, they reared Gothic cathedrals 
and liung their walls with Madonnas. In science, they 
have bequeathed us prodigies of metaphysical and 
theological acuteness and p<)\ver. But in agriculture 
and manufactures, they were rude and clums}^ They 



13 

had almost no commerce, and no physical science. 
Men were consequently poor; wore coarse garments; 
lived on eartlien floors ; ate from wooden trenchers ; 
had, in short, scarcely one of our modern luxuries, and 
but very few even of our modern comforts. We now 
build our harns better than most of those mediaeval 
saints and heroes Imilt their houses. Such was the 
Europe of the Middle Ages. 

But, in the fifteenth century, the whole aspect of 
society iniderwent a sudden and signal change. There 
came on a crop of wonderful discoveries and inven- 
tions which put the world upon a new stadium of 
its career, discoveries and inventions for several of 
which we are indebted to the monks of the Papal 
Church. Printing, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, 
the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope, the discovery 
of America, and the revival of classical learning conse- 
quent upon the fall of Constantinople into the hands 
of the Turks in 1453 : these are the things we name as 
of chiefest significance in modern -history. Printing 
cheapened books immensely, and so sent knowledge 
down in due time into the peasant's cottage. Gun- 
powder revolutionized the art of war, l)ringing in artil- 
lery to decide the fortunes of l)attles and the fate of 
empires. The mariner's compass gave daring to timid 
sailors, whitening dangerous seas with swelling canvas. 
The new passage to the East Indies shifted the theatre 
of commerce from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 
and Indian Oceans. The discovery of America gave 



14 

not merely a new continent to g<'ography, l)nt a new 
life to tlie world ; while tlie revival of classical learning 
waked np the slunil)ering fires of genius like a new in- 
spiration. Close upon the heels of this remarkable 
cluster of inventions and disco^•eries trod the great 
leaders of the long procession of our modern workers 
and heroes: Erasmus, Luther, and Melancthon, fol- 
lowed at due intervals by Gustavus Adolphus, and 
Lord Bacon, and Oliver Cromwell, and George 
Washington, and the two Napoleons; in whose train 
are votaries of natural science, inventors of useful ma- 
chines, steamboats, and telegraphs, such as Whitney, 
Fulton, Morse, merchant princes rolling in wealth, 
newsj^japers, socialistic reformers, and many-minded 
revolutionizers of society and Governments without 
number and without end. 

These names, events, and features of our modern 
civilization, as you readily perceive, are mostly Protest- 
ant. The Roman Catholic part of Christendom has 
been jealous of all this stir and thrift. If France and 
Belgium are industrious and thrifty without being 
Protestant, it is in part, and in large part, because they 
were both of them quickened by the Keformation, re- 
ceiving an impulse which could not be lost. It cannot 
be denied that Roman Catholic Europe, left to itself, 
is mostly poor and torpid ; Protestant Europe, rich and 
enterprising. Commerce and the mechanic arts, though 
not begotten of Protestantism, were rpiickly adopted 
by it, baptized at its altars, and made to fight its 
battles for the dominion of the world. 



15 

Tliis continent now underneatli our feet, tliongli 
discovered by Koman Catholics, first colonized and 
desperately struggled for by tliem, soon passed into 
Protestant hands ; and, of all Protestant countries, this 
is the most intensely Protestant. The adventurous 
energy which came of the Lutheran Reformation, sul)- 
sidizing the inventions and discoveries which shortly 
preceded it, has found here its amplest and most con- 
genial theatre. Everything about the continent, and 
about its history, has served to stimulate to the utmost 
the material development of its occupants. Its vast 
and virgin territory, which had been for centuries 
gathering fatness ; its bays, and lakes, and rivers, ofler- 
ing its harvests a ready exit to market ; its varied and 
boundless mineral resources ; its j^opulation, a cunning 
amalgam of the boldest blood of the best races of 
Europe ; its free institutions, electrifying the char- 
acter of every immigrant: these things have all told 
uj^on us with tremendous power, im2)elling us, as no 
peojde were ever l^efore impelled, towards a rank and 
rampant materialism. 

I am no extravagant eulogist of the Middle Ages. 
I do not stand up here to depreciate the achievements 
of modern times. I admit, without reluctance, that 
great improvements have passed upon the whole face 
and the whole structure of human society. We must 
certainly believe in progress, as we believe in Provi- 
dence, whose Avheels roll ever forward and not back- 
^vard. We may, certainly, allow that the world is 



10 

manifestly nearer its milleiiiuni than it was six hun- 
dred years ago ; and yet, let us not fail to observe, that 
this entire mass of improvements, which distinguish 
the Modern Age, is distinctively material rather than 
spiritual. The mind of the Middle Ages, loyal to the 
Organon of Aristotle, as then interpreted and applied, 
was introspective and metaphysical ; its social and 
public life unthrifty, but chivalric ; its i)iety ascetic 
and cloistered, l)ut meditative and climbing. The mind 
of the Modern Age, loyal to the Organon of Bacon, 
and swayed still more by his example, gazes and 
travels ever outwards amongst the phenomena of time 
and sense. Use is its watchword. It levels forests, 
builds factories, bridles rivers, tunnels mountains, 
bridges oceans, and sends the mysterious Avdiispers of 
its intelligence like lightning around the glol)e. In 
science, the branches most honored have been Astron- 
omy, Geology, Chemistry, and the like, since these help 
us most in commerce, agriculture, and the mechanic 
arts. Our social life is noisy, flaunting, and feverish. 
Even our religion is more of the hands and the head, 
than of the heart. Men would rather carry the Gospel 
amongst the gray ruins of Asia, or into the wilds of 
Africa, than into the unexplored territory of their own 
souls. They would rather assault some outAvard insti- 
tution than a bosom sin. They would rather serve 
God by doing good, than by being good. 

And so the genius of our age, especially in Protest- 
ant lands, and pre-eminently in our own, is distinct- 



17 

ively mecliauical, objective, and practical. An age ])y 
no means to l)e utterly decried. On many accounts, an 
age to l)e admired and applauded ratlier. We give it 
credit for seeking to realize, as it never lias l)een real- 
ized, tlie noble idea of man's dominion over nature ; 
wrestlino; to subdue to itself all iiiaterial elements and 
forces, and all brute instincts, making tliem docile and 
subservient to liuman uses. It lias added largely to 
tlie sum total of liuman comfort and happiness; eman- 
cipating the race from many grievous burdens and 
afflictions, formerly endured; and holding forth the 
promise of still wider conquests, and still more splen- 
did l)eiiefactions, in the ages to come. These are the 
good points and cheering aspects of our case. 

But there are other points and aspects, as already 
intimated, which are not so good and cheering. It is 
distinctively an industrial and not a spiritual civiliza- 
tion which is thus multiplying its triumphs and its 
trophies. A material enterprise like that which now 
galvanizes the world, issues, of course, in wealth. The 
leading nations, especially the Protestant nations of the 
earth, have all been immensely enriched within the last 
two or three hundred years ; and, as a natural result, 
there has arisen an immensely enhanced regard for 
riches. Those who have wealth are more courted and 
honored and envied, while those who have it not are 
more mad after it. Solid and homely comforts, it is 
true, are vastly more alnindant. The fowl, which 
Henry the Fourth desired for the peasant's ])ot on Sun- 



18 

day, has found its Avay tliitlier almost every day in the 
week. From comforts, the masses have pushed on fast 
and far towards luxuries which enervate. Men have 
hecome dainty, self indulgent, and selfish. A ])assion 
for display comes in — disjday in dress, in equipage, and 
in the entire economy of the household. Large exjiend- 
ituros are rendered necessary, and these lead, too 
often, to eml)arrassments, out of which there is no exit 
l)ut l)y atrocious forgeries and frauds. Thus on all 
sides there is an impatient chafing against the straight 
and sober boundaries of virtue. This madness invades 
all ranks and orders of society. It seizes upon the 
farmer behind his plow, making him unhappy over his 
slow returns. It makes the mechanic restive under his 
incessant and heavy toil. It tempts the merchant to 
engage in desperate ventures in the ho2)e of extempor- 
izing a fortune. It degrades the physician, who should 
l)e an honor to science and an angel of mercy, into a 
drudge for fees. It turns the lawyer aside from high 
endeavors after a strictly professional reputation, to l)e 
a mere broker of estates and stocks. Instead of states- 
men, proud of being poor in their country's service, it 
sends us politicians, who are hunters of jilace for the 
sake of jx'lf It assails even the sacred office of the 
Gospel ministry, thinning its ranks, and scaring candi- 
dates away fr<^m its gates 1 )y raising the cry of poverty. 
The finer kinds of rejDutation, friendship, duty, honor, 
the things which, in more chivalric ages, used to l»e 
esteemed and died for, are now nnder a cloud. The 



19 

insane passion for gain lias l)een overriding all. There 
never, probahly, Avas a time since tlie world began, 
when, throuirhout all classes and conditions of men, the 
sense of property was so acnte as no\v ; Avlien fortunes 
were so intensely coveted, and indigence so intensely 
feared. In short, the age, in its dominant ideas and 
activities, is pre-eminently a commercial age. All 
higher ideas are, of course, imperilled. Science, art, 
religion — all must suffer. " With all thy gettings, get 
wisdom," is the reading of the Ancient Scriptures. 
But, according to the Modern Gospel of Mammon, the 
injunction is : " By all means get money ; honestly, if 
you can ; dishonestly, if you must." 

What is thus true of all Protestant Christendom, is, 
as 1 have said before, pre-eminently true of us. En- 
gland is bad enough, with her greedy fingers out 
all over the globe. We are worse. Here, on this 
magnificent continent, hid aAvay for ages behind the 
western horizon, and sternly interdicted to Europe till 
Europe had cradled the Iveformation, a continent 
washed on either side of it by the chief oceans of the 
jxlobe, these oceans now swarming with our ships ; our 
broad acres groaning beneath the burden of their har- 
vests ; our mountains stufted Avitli coal, and iron, and 
o-old ; our institutions about us as free as the breezes of 
the sky; here we are, a nation of sturdy workers; 
athletic, eager, adventurous Nimrods of a boundless 
material invasion and conquest. Nimrods, did I say ? 
Titans, rather ; for, not content to sul)due the earth, we 
' are also storming the heavens. 



20 



It n'(|iiircs no special insight to catalogue our Na- 
tional oftcnccs. Tliey are known and i-ead of all men : 
the offences committed by us in our organic capacity ; 
with those other individual offences, of such general 
prevalence as to be fairly chargealjle on us as a people. 
Foremost amongst our organic offences, some would 
reckon the apparent, though doubtless undesigned, 
atheism of our National Constitution, which is silent in 
regard to the Divine authority and Providence. This 
silence is certainly imfortunate, but cannot be allowed 
to militate against the universally admitted fact, that 
our institutions rest uj)on a Christian basis. Our high- 
est legal authorities have again and again pronounced 
us a Christian people. But most unchristian, surely, 
has been that territorial rapacity, which, from genera- 
tion to generation, has been so sternly crowding the 
Red Man towards the setting sun ; which has sent (3ur 
conquering arms into the Halls of the Montezumas; 
and which has menaced Spain with the seizure of her 
wealthiest colony. Most unchristian is that cruel greed 
of gain, ^vhich has doomed the Black Man to a vas- 
salaii:e, abhorrent to the laws of nature and offensive to 
the genius of our religion. These are palpalde, organic 
offences, laying the heavy burden of their guilt more or 
less upon the nation as a whole. But they are all only 
branches of a single tree, whose noxious I'oots have been 
fed by the common soil of the continent. In all sec- 
tions alike there rages a madness for material good, 
crowning Cotton as its King in the South, crowning 



21 

Corn in tlic North ; a madness, av liicli luis debauched 
the general conscience of tlie nation, so as nearly to 
have wrecked our fortunes, and 'Ijlasted all our hopes, 
as a I\e2:)uLlic. Noav, indeed, wa are at length aroused, 
flinging our treasures and our lives into the deadly 
l)reach ; Init wIkj can recall without a shudder the sor- 
did, selfish apathy, which, not many montlis ago, stood 
l)y with folded arms, anxious only for the cargo, while 
our noljle Slii]^ of State, with torn flag, and abandoned 
Ijy traitorous officers, was driving straight u})on the 
rocks. For this apathy, wliicli lias so nearly ruined us, 
an a])athy engendered of our gross materialism, let us 
hang our heads to-day in honest, bitter shame. And in 
all the time to come may it haunt our guilty memory 
as a stupendous warning against similar delinquencies. 
Made wiser by these perils, which we have barely 
escaped, by these disasters, which are now upon us, 
may our country henceforth be more to us than its 
vulgar soil ; may it be to us a sacred trust, a theatre 
of devout and righteous enterprise, a heritage of free- 
dom, and an asylum to the oppressed of every kindred 
and of every clime. 

Of individual sins, so widely prevalent as justly to 
be considered national, let us also be mindful. Promi- 
nent amongst these is that profaneness of speech, so 
connnon in all parts of the land, which exceeds the 
profaneness of every otlier nation on the globe. No- 
where else on God's footstool does the aAvful name of 
God encounter such flagrant irreverence as liere with 



00 



118. If the Ruler of all the earth l)e iiMk'ed jealous (►f 
his liouor, as tlie Scriptures declare him to Le, well may 
A\'e tremhle to think of this wanton and shocking pro- 
faneness, incessantly rolling up, in such heavy volimie, 
into his listening ears. As a nation, Ave profane also 
his Sabbaths; less, it is true, than some of the nations 
of Euro])e, but vastly more than becomes us, Avdiether 
we consider the better exam])le of our fathers, or the 
Avholesome laAvs Avhicli stand unrepealed upon our 
statute books. Filial insubordination must also be 
reckoned as one of our crying sins. Family govern- 
ment, that Divinely appointed type and germ of all 
civil authority and order, is shamefully slack amongst 
us. We are sIoav to rise uj) before the hoary head and 
lionor the aged man. Hence our sadly irreverent atti- 
tude toAvards all rightful authority; our shalloAV and 
godless theory of civil gOA^ernment as simply a human 
compact ; and our loose, Ioav notions, of the sacredness 
of public hiAv. We are inclined to think of constitu- 
tions as only so much parchment, and of statutes as 
only enactments, representing the opinions of accidental 
majorities. These, Ave admit, are faults incident ahvays 
to Republican institutions. But, Avith us, they have 
had a rankness of groAvth, and have attained proj^or- 
tions, Avhich can be explained only by reference to the 
peculiar conditions of our national life. Gathered out 
of all nations, and planted here on this fresh continent, 
so teeming with stimulants to material enterprise and 
aggrandizement, Ave haA^e sucked up poison out of the 



23 

fatness of our territoiy, till now at length we are in 
that state wliicli is nigli unto cursing. 

And now tlie judgments of God are upon us. His 
red artillery has started down the slope of the heavens; 
nay, has already opened its thunders against our reliel- 
lious and boastful ranks. It is not for me to say which 
one of our offences is the special target of this dreadful 
artillery. Let no one section of our common country 
angrily up1:)raid another for its vices or its crimes. We 
are offenders, all of us, North and South, East and 
West, Material good, an overweening sense of which 
threatens extinction to every nobler sentiment, has been 
the grand Dagon of a universal idolatry. Mad has been 
our pursuit of gain ; cruel, our indifference to the rights 
and happiness of oppressed and inferior races within 
our borders ; inexcusable, the arrogance of our attitude 
towards other nations ; shameful, our reckless surrender 
of political power into the hands of corrupt and greedy 
dema<Too-ues : heinous, our irreverence towards God, 
towards parental, and towards all civil authorit}^, or- 
dained of God. These are our offences, any one of 
which may justly have waked up against us the Divine 
displeasure. 

Of these offences let us now heartily repent, with 
our hands upon our mouths and our mouths in the 
dust. And let us prove the sincerity of our repentance 
by the patience with which we endure this present bit- 
ter chastening of Providence. It may l)e that we have 
not yet tasted the dregs of this cup of wrath. In the 



24 

dreadful striic^do, into wliicli wo have entered for the 
maintenance of our national integrity and the re-estab- 
lishment of the national authority, other disasters, 
heavier than have yet l)efallen us, may still be in store 
for us. If they come, let our courage, inspired by our 
Christian faith, T)e such as not to be staggered l)y them. 
If in our extremity, ])attling desperately for the Union, 
the Constitution, and the La^vs, a new purpose is forced 
upon us, and a new watchword is commended to our 
lips, even the emancipation of the enslaved, let us acce])t 
it with alacrity as the l)ehest of God. Our wisdom 
may not have counseled it ; Init the wisdom of man is 
sometimes foolishness w^th God. 

Our nationality, I am confident, is destined to sur- 
vive this conflict, emero;infr from the smoke of battles 
more radiant and powerful than ever. But not as a 
godless, boastful, corrupt, and cruel nationality, can it 
thus emerge. He who sits as King in Zion, be assured, 
will vindicate his own mastership of the continent. 
Along the sky, which overarches it, the Hand tliat 
grasps our destinies is unrolling the scroll of the Ten 
Commandments ; and if we stand here victorious, puis- 
sant, and prosperous, it must be in loyal, cheerful 
subjection to these Commandments. Our idolatry of 
material good, with all its brood of sins now wasting 
our moral stamina, must be exorcised ; and our one 
ambition, our one life-hmg struggle, must be, to estab- 
lish and maintain embodied here, in its grandest jn-o- 
portions, the true idea of a Christian State. 



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